Medical Students Take iPod Sounds to Heart

PHILADEPLHIA, March 30 -- The iPod generation of medical students is swaying to the beat of mitral-valve regurgitation and aortic stenoses.
The sound of murmurs is music to the ears of these medical students who are being drilled in cardiac auscultation via downloadable MP3 files of beating hearts.
The training method draws on the power of repetition to teach abnormal heart sounds, said cardiologist Michael Barrett, M.D., of Temple University School of Medicine, in an interview.
For years, senior physicians have been murmuring about the failure of younger clinicians and physician wannabes to achieve the old-time sensitivity to the characteristic sounds of dysfunctional heart